


Abyssopelagia

by bluestar



Category: Pacific Rim
Genre: Gen, High Fantasy AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 14:02:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17509973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluestar/pseuds/bluestar
Summary: Newt and Hermann are two mages in the service of the Shattered Rangers, the remaining resistance against a plague of corrupted beast-spirits ravaging the world. This is the story of the final push.---A story trade for Feriowind!





	1. Chapter 1

1.

 

 

                Rain fell in unending sheets. The ground was churned to mud and the bald roots of trees stood out starkly, like dead limbs half-unburied. The field of mud had once been a copse of dense trees, its wreckage pitiful to behold. Something lurked in the dying, broken trees, and ringing the destruction a party of rangers waited. They slid glances to the pair of mages sitting in a lopsided, much-patched tent at the ring’s edge – a pair that had been bickering and arguing ceaselessly the entire march, only to fall silent when the hunters had finally found their prey.

                The rangers were always the front line of defense against corrupted spirits. They used the magecraft the pair made for them to brutal effect: glutton-jaws and unbreakable gravity snares, will-o’-the-wisp lures that enticed the corrupted into well-laid traps. But, for whatever reason…today the mages had wanted an excursion out of headquarters. The few trees left standing shook and baleful blue light flashed through the rain, drawing the rangers’ attention.

                “This is a foolish idea,” the taller mage said, looking up from the sheet of foolscap he had been furiously writing on. Diagrams for an enormous glutton-jaw trap had been sketched, scribbled out and reworked. His companion, a shorter and less well-kempt man with wireframe glasses and muddy robes, shrugged.

                “If it’s foolish we’ll go back to your plan. This is _my_ field test, Hermann.”

                “It will kill you.”

                “It _might_ kill me. Try for optimism.”

                The foolscap was crumpled up and thrown aside into a growing pile, and Hermann pulled another. He began sketching the glutton-jaw diagram again but couldn’t keep his full attention on it; the trees shook again, and a high, fierce hissing cut through the sound of rain. “Newt…”

                Newt stood. He shrugged off the robe, rolled up the sleeves and unbuttoned the collar of his once-fine linen shirt. He took off his glasses and held them out. Hermann took them abruptly, standing with him and walking out into the rain. Newt was immediately drenched, but the water didn’t seem to touch Hermann at all; it beaded and bounced off an invisible barrier, running in little rivulets off him.

                “Show-off.”

                “I shan’t be getting a chest cold just because you want to go running around in the rain.”

                A few of the waiting rangers parted so Newt could walk through, all of them giving him uneasy, puzzled looks. Hermann shared the look with them, though he followed Newt doggedly. The pair stepped side by side into the ruined trees and were immediately hit with the sharp, chemical odor of corruption. The spirit’s hissing grew louder and the smell grew stronger, almost unbearable. Newt’s boots squelched in the thick mud. Hermann’s footsteps made no sound at all.

                A thick oak that slewed towards the ground broke with a sharp _snap._ The pair stopped and watched as the tree splintered, a scaled paw’s sharp talons punching through the wood. The spirit’s head was obscured by mist but Newt could see the sapphire glow of its four eyes staring down at them. He took a step forward and the paw’s grip on the tree tightened, shattering it. They stared each other down and Hermann tensed as Newt raised a hand, palm up and open. The silence that followed Hermann seemed to spread in a growing bubble, broken twigs and leaves skittering over the ground as though pulled by a vortex. The spirit’s head snapped towards him and the hissing grew aggressive.

                “Don’t,” Newt said. Hermann paused, the vortex-pull shivering – it grew weaker, but did not cease. “You scare it off, they’ll kill it. We get one chance at this.”

                “If I wait too long the jaw won’t catch it. It will _kill_ you.”

                “Either trust me,” Newt said, eyes never leaving the spirit. “Or turn back.”

                There was no response, but the vortex-pull eased away. Newt took another step forward and the spirit drew back. Its claws uncurled from the destroyed tree, thick splinters falling into the mud. Cold wind drove the rain down harder, slapping at Newt’s face and half-blinding him until all the world was a watery blur.

                “Come down,” he said. His voice was soft but somehow cut through the thick noise of rain and wind, past the unending hisses of the spirit. “Come down and speak to me.”

                Hermann couldn’t help but flinch back as the spirit considered its strange visitor, leaning its head down at last. Corruption hung about it like a living shroud, black opal iridescence making a patchwork of its green scales. Its face was flat with a small, lipless mouth packed with sharp teeth, tongue endlessly flicking at the air like a serpent. It was a sinuous thing, uncurling from itself and gaining yard after yard of lean, muscled length. Newt paid no attention, gaze never wavering.

                “Come down,” he repeated. The whisper echoed, raw power infused in every syllable. “Come down to me.”

                His hand was still raised. The spirit growled and ribbons of corruption drifted from its mouth like smoke. Hermann’s trust wavered and he grasped again for the void – so ineloquently named, calling the vortices he called _jaws._ A glutton-jaw was hunger, pure and perfectly defined – a hole where existence itself should have been, devouring whatever he could capture.

                “It’s okay.”

                Hermann paused, the void trembling and slithering out of his grasp once more. The corruption slid off Newt like oil from water as it tried to infect him, and the more the spirit tried to spread its sickness the more came pouring out of it. Newt reached up and rested his fingertips on the blunt snout. The spirit thrashed like an eel but its head seemed caught fast in Newt’s touch, smoke and scales falling from its body as it unwound.  Hermann watched, unnerved. Summoners were disturbing to most people, wearing the spirits they called on their skin, in their blood and souls. He had been present for some of Newt’s captures before, but never for a spirit so sick with corruption.

_It can’t be done. It will destroy you. You will become the monster you are trying to help._

                How many times had Hermann said those words to Newt? How many times had Newt taken it to heart as a challenge?

                The spirit keened in Newt’s grasp, jaws stretching open hideously wide. Newt didn’t see it – he saw nothing, eyes sheened over the same blue as the spirit’s, his soul torn open to receive another. Blood coursed down his face from his nose and his breathing was stilted – if the spirit kept resisting, if it fought its capture and purging –

                “Newton,” Hermann said, agonized. The corruption was pooling around them, renewing its attempts at attaching to Newt. The spirit was half-unraveled now, bones of clean silver smoke revealed where its scales and flesh fell away. Around Newt’s neck a ring of green was forming, patterned with scales and sinuous long limbs. Nearly completed, but the colors kept washing away, turning dark and fetid…

                “Come to me,” Newt said. The ground shook with the whisper’s power, the pooling corruption trembling with the force. The spirit’s eyes narrowed, the thrashing resistance failing. Newt coughed and gasped as the ring around his throat grew more defined – it was as though he wore a serpent around his neck that was slowly squeezing his throat closed. “You and I are the same. My soul is yours. Let go. Let go. Come home.”

                The narrowed eyes widened, the glow fading no brighter than a firefly’s light  . The purged corruption thrashed like a dying thing, splashing at Newt’s feet. It tried to splash on Hermann but was instantly repulsed, thrown back by a quick inversion of gravity. It curled in on itself and raised a head of rotted bone and flesh, howling wetly as the spirit unraveled in full. The silver of its bones dissipated into mist, and Newt staggered. He swayed, a hand going to his throat before he fell backwards into the mud and lay still. The dying corruption tried at once to blanket over him.

                Hermann raised a closed hand, long fingers uncurling one by one. The sound of wind and rain fell dead. The trees slid through the mud and into a wavering patch of empty air that widened, tearing reality open like a wound. The void within the wound was spattered with stars, the wreckage of trees spinning away into its depths. The hideous rotting beast lifted off the ground and caught itself on the edge of reality’s tatters, trying to pull itself back in. It looked at Hermann and its face contorted with hatred, but its howls were silenced by the vortex. Hermann watched it with fear turning to bitter contempt, and with a sharp gesture slammed the hole shut. The dreadful pull ceased at once, debris that had been coursing towards the void falling around them. A few wisps of corruption drifted away into the rain, diluted, harmless.

                Newt lay on his back, pale and stunned. Hermann knelt beside him and gathered him up to sit, wiping rain and bloody mud from his face anxiously. “You fool. You wretched fool.”

                Newt’s ragged breathing steadied as he cracked his eyes open, mouth curling in a faint smile. All around them the ring of rangers closed in, bows and swords drawn. They looked to Newt, and one gave a faint cry as they spotted an emerald-green tattoo about his neck, the snarling face of a beast in the hollow of his throat.

                “Are you happy now?” Hermann bit out. “Was it worth it, putting yourself into harm’s way? What if the corruption had gotten through? What if the jaw had failed? How could you have _known_ this bloody, idiotic trick would work?”

                Newt’s smile simply grew stronger. He rested his head back against Hermann’s cradling arm, eyes closing as one faint word escaped.

                “Optimism.”

               


	2. Chapter 2

2.

 

                There was a garden in the fort that had once been a walled-off courtyard. The wall had crumbled from time and the efforts of a tree that had rooted itself in an arrowslit decades past, the roots piercing through stone until it had fallen away. A large oak tree threw green-hued shadows into the courtyard, branches outstretched to shade the spirit and summoner who lived there. There had been much protest when Newt had first shown up with the spirit in tow – mostly from Hermann, offering nothing but complaint about the dangers a roaming spirit posed and the veritable beacon it would be for corrupted spirits to try and strike at the rangers. It was a complaint the commanders knew by heart and had done nothing about, other than offer a few platitudes of ‘maybe it won’t always be outside the summoner’s soul’. Cold comfort at the time, but as Hermann helped Newt lay down in the crook of Meatheads arm that evening, he was glad of the enormous creature’s presence.

                Meathead – an odd name Newt had declined to explain about, for sure – blinked its vibrant yellow eyes at Hermann and settled its head back down, curling up close. It had a habit of always growling and hissing under its breath, enjoying the way the echoes bounced about the courtyard. It growled to Newt as though singing a rough lullaby, cradling his unconscious body close. Hermann eased himself down to sit under the oak, stretching his stiff leg and setting his staff off to one side. At least the rain had eased on the long march home.

                “It was a near thing, you know,” he muttered. Meathead glanced over at him, pupils thinning. “It’s true. Corruption on that scale can rarely be purged without injuring oneself. He was stupid to do it alone. All I’d be able to do was toss the lot into a jaw.”

                Meathead’s growling took on a dipping cadence, like the ebb and flow of waves. If it had anything else to say within those growls, Hermann couldn’t understand it. Newt shifted in his sleep and its attention honed on him again. Hermann leaned back against the oak and watched Newt for a moment, lips pressing into a thin line. Summoners departed their bodies after they took in new spirits. Newt had explained it once in his usual rambling, excited manner – the wounds a soul endured taking spirits in could only be healed in the Drift. To enter the Drift was to surrender the self completely, memories and consciousness twining together with greater, unknown parts of existence itself. It had sounded like poetic nonsense to Hermann, but when he said so the argument that ignited had lasted nearly two weeks.

                That was where Newt was now, unwound into that strange sea beyond life and death. He would heal, of course. The spirits that shared his soul now would protect him, and they would all be getting to know the newest addition to their strange family. It would be days before he was back on his feet again…days Hermann was unsure they all had. Give him void-arts any day of the week. A black mage was in tune to a nearer force than the mysticism of the Drift, and Hermann took greater comfort in the cold pull of vortices and the light of stars than spirit work. After all, a glutton-jaw wouldn’t toy with you like a cat with a mouse before striking a killing blow. It just ate you.

                “You’re woolgathering.”

                Hermann looked up, smiling faintly at the ranger crossing the courtyard to sit beside him. He moved his staff aside obligingly for her, nodding towards Newt and Meathead.

                “He’s going to worry me grey before I see my fortieth year, Mako,” he said. “You can relate. Surely Raleigh does the same to you.”

                Mako nodded, finding a comfortable nook between two roots to sit in. “It’s true. But your partner’s trials are different than ours. We only have patrols and arms practice to worry over.”

                “You sell yourself short. Chainswords are altogether wretched to learn, and yet you both mastered them.” Mako’s small smile earned one in return. “Don’t play humble with me, my dear. I’ve known you long enough to see through a lie.”

                “Better to be humble than overreaching,” Mako said. She looked to Newt and her smile faded, taking in his pale, draw face. “How many can a soul bear before it’s too much?”

                “He’s determined his own capacity to cap at twenty,” Hermann said flatly. At the alarm in Mako’s face he shrugged. “I’m assuming it was a joke. He’ll be fine for now. Tell me, how was the patrol? You’re back early.”

                “The wilds grow more every day,” she said. She pushed up her sleeve and Hermann saw the linen bandages wrapped about her sword arm, a faint stain of blood seeping through. “We had visitors on the road…they decided they wanted to disarm me in more ways than one.”

                “Mako…” Hermann drew her arm over, a hand hovering over the wound. Black mages weren’t healers by any stretch of the imagination, but Hermann was as well-versed in field triage as the next man. The light that suffused Mako’s bandages was more the silver of moonlight than a typical warm, sunny gold, but the healing spell knit the damage back together all the same. Lines of pain around Mako’s eyes eased away and she sighed, unwinding the bandages and rubbing her healed arm. The scars were fresh and would always remain, but they troubled her no longer.

                “You didn’t have to do that. I know how spent you must be after what you went through today.”

                “Nonsense. As it is, I spent most of your girlhood patching skinned knees and scrapes. I’ve not lost the knack for it.”

                Mako laughed, the tension she had been expertly pushing back faded with the pain. “You make me sound like I was a scoundrel!”

                “You _were_ ,” Hermann said, amused. “Commander Pentecost might not have let you run wild, but everyone else here did. Newt especially.”

                “We were partners in crime,” Mako admitted. “He taught me to climb trees so I could get to the scullery through the window. I used to steal honeycakes for us.”

                “Trust me, I know. He’s a terrible liar and worse influence, and I’ve lectured him on both.” Meathead’s growls were growing quieter; Hermann glanced over again and saw the spirit was falling asleep, the tip of its tongue poking out between rows of sharp teeth. “Where is Raleigh? Is he well?”

                “Yes. The ambush was less about killing us than testing our defenses,” Mako said. Her expression grew distant. “Probing for weaknesses in our combat, trying to figure out how best to disarm and disable. It feels like the reins have changed hands again.”

                “If there was ever any on them at all. It could be that their changes in behavior are the corruption trying new ways of spreading. A disease may adapt to new ways of spreading, if its victims successfully push back.”

                “I used to think it was mindless. I’m not sure about that anymore.” Mako ran her hand over her new scars, studying the thin twisting stripes. “A plague is mindless. The corruption adapts too quickly these days for it to be so.”

                “Perhaps,” Hermann murmured, troubled. “The longer this war drags on the less sure I am of anything.”

                “The Commander won’t like to hear that.”

                Hermann laughed, the creeping worry of the conversation broken. “You wouldn’t report such talk to him! I get into arguments enough with Newt, you wouldn’t add on a dressing-down to the mix.”

                “I wouldn’t, I’m not that cruel.” Mako stood and offered her hand to Hermann; he grabbed his staff and took it, letting her hoist him up. “Come. He needs his rest and he’ll only tease you for staying out here all night again with him. Meathead will look after him.”

                Meathead’s eyes opened slightly at its name; it growled low in greeting and Mako patted its soft muzzle. Newt was oblivious to them both, still deeply asleep. Hermann sighed.

                “Very well. I never do myself any favors sitting on the ground, anyway…better to work in the library.”

                “Or joining me and the others for dinner. I want to hear all about the gossip I missed while we were away.” Hermann laughed again and let himself be lead back inside, though he looked back over his shoulder as they departed. Meathead still cradled Newt close, and had turned its gaze up to watch the first stars of the evening begin to shine.

               

 


	3. Chapter 3

3.

 

                Formless, Newt fell through the Drift.

                In this place his nature became real, more than the flesh of himself in the living world could ever express or be. In the Drift all parts of his soul were visible to him, the multitude of spirits that lived in him. It was a vast and sacred silence he fell through, endlessly.

                It also made him a little dizzy, but he had learned to ignore that.

                The newest spirit in the fold was still getting their bearings. His oldest summons, the ones that had been with him since he was a child, were always the first to great newcomers. They were with the new spirit now – he watched as they learned each other, minds coming together like drops of rain pooling, forming a new, singular sense of self. He was always a little outside this deeper communion. He envied it sometimes, but understood to give in to it would unmake him completely. If he tried it, there was a good chance he would never be the same again.

                Newt’s endless fall transmuted seamlessly into a rise, like a bird whose wings had caught the updraft of a hot wind. The dizziness washed over him briefly and he shook it off. It was the cost of being alive in the Drift, not a fully freed and disembodied soul. He had learned from other souls in the Drift that a living experience was far different from a permanent, dead resident’s. As always, he wondered what it would be like. The cold, star-smeared darkness of the void? Water and waves, schools of ethereal fish in some cosmic ocean? Or something new entirely, requiring senses a soul developed only when their mortal bodies failed them and their core being was set free?

                He didn’t know. He had once told Hermann he looked forward to finding out, and had been berated for ‘courting death’. Which was a stupid thing to think of him….but amidst the argument, Newt had felt touched that Hermann had cared enough to yell at him about it.

                His soul rose and parted through great clouds and rainstorms that did not touch him, yet he felt the rain slick against his face, plastering his hair. He slipped through the memory of the newest spirit’s taming – it was his memory now, and together they watched it from both his and their points of view. Newt shuddered to feel the thick crawl of corruption through his flesh. The spirit hissed at the pain of their soul parting open, a clean, sharp feeling as though being cut apart by a hard edge of light. The memory played forever and was over in a moment. The serpentine spirit let the last of its resistances fall away, the spirits winding together in a glory, They caught Newt in his rising, nesting back in the space he had made for them all in his soul. The warmth was brighter than the sun, more alive than life itself. It suffused his soul-self, his skin, his blood and bones.

                Whole once more, and satisfied, Newt let himself fall away from the Drift.

                He landed back in his body with a _thud._

“Ah, there he is.”

                Returning from the Drift wasn’t difficult after so many years, but it was still tiring as all hell. Newt’s body felt like it was made of wet, cold clay; heavy and clumsy, liable to fall apart if he tried to move. He gathered every scrap of energy he could and forced his eyes to open the slightest crack. There was a blurry shape leaning over him, holding a spoonful of something spicy-smelling and hot to his lips.

                “Come on, now. You know this by heart. Open.” Newt’s eyes closed and the dwindling energy forced his mouth to open a little. The restorative poured in and stung his tongue, prickling its way down his throat like nettles. Tendo had never said what the stuff was made of, but it did its work quickly. The nettles settled in his stomach and the heat spread through his clay limbs, life tingling back all at once. Newt groaned unhappily as he felt his glasses pushed onto his face, Tendo helping him sit up.

                “I hate that tea.”

                “You hate the torpor too. Lesser of two evils, my friend.”

                Newt grunted in agreement, taking the cup Tendo offered with unsteady hands. He sipped the tea slowly, shivering at the nettles. “What day is it?”

                “Third day, tenth bell of the morning. Meathead wanted to keep you out but it started to rain again.”

                “Thank you.”

                “Thank Ranger Hansen, he’s the one carried you in. I’m not going to lug you around for your health.” Tendo laughed as Newt threw the emptied tin cup at him, catching it easily. “Temper, temper.”

                “You gave me that tea instead of breakfast, I’m allowed to be cross.”

                “Cross? Hermann is cross. You’re crotchety.” Newt looked around at Hermann’s name, frowning. “He’s not here, he had to go to a training drill. He’ll be back soon.”

                “He made you mind me again?”

                “He didn’t make me do anything,” Tendo said. He whapped Newt’s shoulder gently, but enough to be reproving. “Don’t be irritable with your friends, it’s not our fault you feel like shit after Drifting.”        

                Humbled, Newt nodded. “Sorry.”

                Tendo gave him a look, but Newt’s expression matched the apology and he nodded. “Forgiven. You think you can walk?”

                “Better if I try now. Lying around after waking just makes me feel worse.” Tendo offered him a hand up and he rose unsteadily, losing his balance as he left his cot. A combed wool blanket fell from his shoulders and he looked down at himself in dismay. “I’ve been in the same clothes three days?”               

                “Yes, but you don’t smell,” Tendo said cheerfully. “Don’t have to shave either. Unless you finally want to try and fight the stubble off for good?”

                Newt grunted again, letting go of Tendo’s hand and walking slowly to the wash basin across the room. His balance was always slow to return, and his steps were unsteady. He looked at his reflection in the cracked old mirror with a grimace.

                “Gods’ teeth, I’m frightful.”

                “Messy hair from three days’ sleep can be fixed. The rest…” Tendo shrugged philosophically, laughing again as Newt flicked water at him.

                “Don’t you have somewhere else to be, Commander?”

                “Nowhere that needs my love and care as much as you do.”

                Newt rolled his eyes in joking annoyance, though it faded as he looked back at his reflection. The face that looked back was drawn and hollow-eyed, as though recovering from illness. Tendo’s levity faded as he watched Newt explore the peaking planes of his cheekbones worriedly.

                “Hermann was right, you know. It was foolish.”

                “It worked.”

                “A plan can be two things at once, Newt. It worked, yes. But look what it did to you. Corruption eats away at what it touches.”

                Newt looked down, scooping tepid water into his hands and splashing his face. “I wasn’t consumed.”

                “No, but it touched you. You look sick.”

                “I’m _not._ ” The sharpness in his own tone took Newt by surprise. Tendo merely watched him, the silence rebuking enough. He looked away and splashed his face again, roughly toweled himself dry. “I’m not. It worked. I was right.”

                “Was it worth it?”

                Newt straightened, pulling down his collar. The new tattoo gleamed with droplets of water as though emerald-studded, the spirit’s mouth forever open in a howl. “Yes,” he said, quiet. “But I don’t think it’s something I can keep doing. I could feel it, Tendo. It wanted to get inside me so badly. It’s like…it smells like saltwater, but the feel of it is thick and slow. It sticks to you, seeps across you like it could smother you. Like you’re drowning in mud.”

                Tendo crossed the room without Newt’s noticing, putting a hand on his shoulder to steady him. Newt blinked, realizing he’d been swaying; he leaned against Tendo’s support gratefully.

                “It’s getting worse,” Tendo said. Newt nodded. “You need to tell the Marshall.”

                “I know.”

                “But?”

                “I’m afraid of what he wants me to tell him. That there’s a chance to purge the corrupted. He’ll want me to do it again and…” Newt shivered. “I don’t know what could happen if I do.”

                Tendo’s grip tightened, support and anchor. “Whatever happens, you know Hermann will be there beside you. He won’t let you fall.”

                Newt’s worry eased, but only slightly. “I know. But he won’t thank me for dragging him along for the ride.”

                Tendo grinned, patting Newt’s shoulder genially. “True enough. Dress and do something about your….everything. We’ve reports to make and breakfast to eat.”

                Newt rolled his eyes again, shooing Tendo out of the little chamber, protesting a need for privacy as a delicate condition demanded. His smile faded slightly as he touched the spiritmark at his throat again, feeling the inquisitive rise of spirits in the back of his mind.

                _are   y o u    a  f r a id   ?_

“A little…well. A lot.”

                The spirits sighed in chorus through his mind, briefly lifting his soul up – Newt felt the ebb and flow of the Drift humming through his very nerves, reality briefly turning to prismatic blues and greys.

 

                  _we   t  oo   a re    with   y  o u ,   su m mo n er  .   t he   v oid-b re ather , and   w e   ._

_b e  brave ._

                The prismatics eased away, leaving Newt standing in the middle of his small, grey chamber. He blinked away the lingering Drift-light and pressed his hand to his heart, to the scar there that lead into his soul.

                “I’ll do my best.”

               


	4. Chapter 4

4.

 

                “Tell me everything that happened, ranger.”

                The Lord Marshal sat across from the wounded ranger, leaning forward and hands clasped together. The ruff of wolf fur rustled around the collar of his cloak of office; the fort was ever drafty and cold, unseen breezes sweeping over the pair in the dim stone room. The ranger looked up at him, face battered. One eye was blackened and swollen shut, a cruel cut slicing down across his cheek.

                “It was them, sir. The cultists. They’re on the rise and they…” the ranger paused to blot at the still-bleeding cut. “The village was a ruin. Corruption so thick we didn’t dare go near. They’ve opened breach-jaws, three at least.”

                The Marshal leaned back with a heavy sigh. “No survivors?”

                “None we could see, sir. Livestock, crops. Everything was consumed, we wagered we were too late for anyone who hadn’t been able to escape the cultists in time.”

                The Marshal nodded; behind him, Tendo was making heavy-hearted notes, blotting a black mark over the name of the lost village. It had only been a days’ ride away and still the rangers hadn’t been fast enough. The patrol the wounded ranger had come from had been too slow, stymied by an attack by lesser corrupted spirits. An attack the cultists had instigated, opening breach-jaws and setting the diseased beasts loose. The ranger shifted uneasily in his chair and caught his breath in muted pain; the Marshal’s attention drew back to him and he stood, nodding to the man.

                “Commander Choi will take the rest of your report. Afterwards, go to the barracks for food and rest. You earned it.” The ranger brightened a little, muttered his thanks. The Lord Marshal left the room and felt as though a boulder’s worth of troubles settled about his shoulders, wanting him to bend down from the anguish. He ignored it, marching through the halls of the fort until he was back in the war room. He had had no notion of where to go, but instinct always drove him back to the wide open space with its map-covered walls and guttering sconces, the smell of must and sound of low, tense conversation. Lord Marshal Pentecost had no home but the fort, no family but his rangers. And with every incursion of the corruption, the spirits, the gods-damned cultists…he felt home and family edging closer and closer to ruin.

                In his heart of hearts he was afraid. The boulder grew heavier. Pentecost leaned forward with his hands braced on a scroll-strewn table, fingers digging into the oaken surface. His jaw clenched and his eyes screwed shut for a brief moment – not so brief, though, that it went unnoticed. The muttering conversations about him stuttered, fell quiet. Pentecost looked up to see his people looking at him, uncertainty growing. The boulder shifted, ground down against him; for a moment Pentecost wanted to bellow at them to leave him, to let him have a respite to absorb the loss of a hundred people, a village wiped off the map like it had never existed.

                The moment passed and he straightened, shifting his shoulders. The boulder’s weight did not ease but settled on him with its fellows, a mountain’s worth of fears and worries bulwarking themselves in his heart.

                “Edelweiss Ridge is gone,” he said. There were flinches and sharp-drawn breaths, but nothing more. “A cultist sect opened enough breach-jaws to free a pack of four corrupted spirits. I want a fresh patrol of rangers with sealer training riding out within the hour. You,” he pointed to a patrol captain. “Arrange a tracking party for survivors of the village, I want them collected and brought to one of the outposts. The falcon requesting our aid was received yesterday, anyone fleeing the village won’t have made it far on foot.”

                There was a flurry of salutes, ‘yes sirs’ and activity, the war room stirred like a kicked hornet’s nest into action. Pentecost sat down in his heavy oak chair at the head of the table, pulling a random report and reading. The words blurred together and the bulwark gave a threatening shift inside; Pentecost railed against the exhaustion and grief, walling it away. He would not break. He had too much work still to do.

 

* * *

 

                “Fine day for a scuffle, isn’t it.”

                Mako looked up at her visitor and sighed. “Hello, Ranger Hansen.”

                “Ranger Mori,” Hansen replied, giving her a sharp, mocking salute. “Why the long face? What’s not to like? We go sweep up the mess that pack of greenhorns left for us, save a patch of rotten earth, ride home and are heroes! ‘Til we have to do it all over again tomorrow morning, anyway.” He sat down beside her on the musty hay bale, sending up a cloud of dust that turned his green cloak grey. Mako kept her attention back to the loose strap of her gauntlet, pushing back a frown of disapproval.

                “They weren’t greenhorns,” Raleigh murmured from her opposite side. He was running a clean rag over his chainsword, the links gleaming brightly even in the overcast light of morning. “It was a seasoned crew. They were routed.”

                “Wasn’t talking to you, Becket,” Hansen said. His choleric temper was known and tolerated, but the ranger wasn’t well-liked. Whatever chip he had on his shoulder for Raleigh, Mako could never figure out. “So, Mako. What d’you think? You a betting woman?”

                “On occasion.”

                “Excellent. Because I bet-” he palmed a copper piece, walking it over his knuckles. “A penny that this is going to be a bloody waste of everyone’s time and resources. Edelweiss Ridge is dead, and your father’s got us sweeping up a mire for no other reason than guilt he wasn’t fast enough.”

                Mako looked up at Hansen slowly, the words sticking in her mouth like thorns. “Woodchuck, why don’t you go bother _your_ father and leave the adults alone? We have to finish gearing up.”

                The childhood nickname sent a twitch of annoyance over Hansen’s face. He flipped the copper in the air and didn’t flinch when Mako snatched it up, still staring him down. He grinned after a moment and slid off the bale with a shrug. “See you on the road, rangers.”

                “I can’t believe you were ever friends with him,” Raleigh said mildly. Mako gave a tired laugh.

                “Somedays I find it hard to believe too,” she said. “He changed after his mother died.”

                “Everyone’s lost somebody. Doesn’t mean you have to grow into a jackass about it.”

                Mako gave up fussing with the gauntlet strap and held it out to Raleigh; he had it fastened and tightened perfectly in a blink. She twisted her arm to and fro, rising from the bale and holding her other hand out. He handed off her own sword and watched as she unsheathed it, giving it a few testing swings. The blade’s edges were so fine a cut wouldn’t even register until the blood began to flow; steel folded and folded again until the ripples over its surface seemed like a patina of crashing ocean waves. They were a pair, the secret of their making kept so close it was more myth than craft.

                Raleigh stood and cast his polishing rag aside, going opposite of Mako and holding his sword up in defense. She lighted towards him at once, a twisting strike so fast the chainsword wounded the air itself. The sword was limned in gold as the air around them rippled and settled, sparks striking up where Raleigh parried her. Again and again Mako struck; Raleigh parried each blow, both unflinching as golden sparks bit at their clothes and faces. The swords and their wielders, both an inseparable pair. Rangers that fought alone died alone, but those who were paired with an equal partner were forces beyond reckoning. Raleigh’s first pairing had been broken when a corrupted spirit had killed his brother. The battle was grim warning and legend alike; Raleigh had defeated the beast but had nearly died in the process, only the luck of blind rage and desperation winning through.

                That had been years ago. He was her partner now, her paired bond. They had made their oaths to the Lord Marshal and to the half-made gods of the Drift, oaths of service, of fealty. They were rangers of the wilds and they would serve until the shores of the Drift came for them. Mako swung her sword high and Raleigh countered easy as breathing; her blade twisted apart into a blazing whip, streaking fire. He raised his arm before it could snare about his neck; the golden chain caught him fast, and Raleigh fell to one knee with a breathless laugh.

                “Yield.”

                There was no escaping the grip of the chain unless its wielder wished it so. Mako palmed the hilt and the chain loosened, the glimmer of gold fading as the chain slithered away and clicked together into a solid blade again. Raleigh grinned as she helped him up, admiring the seared marks on his gauntlet.

                “You always yield too quickly,” she said, taking up the polishing rag and dusting a bit of ash off the gauntlet’s edge. “Sometimes I wonder if you let me win.”

                “That’d be poor sport. I just know when I’m beat.”

                “Alright then. So long as you never forget it.”

                Out in the courtyard came the sharp sound of a bugle; the call to assemble. The brief levity their sparring had sparked faded. Mako and Raleigh sheathed their swords and took up their packs, marching out into the drizzling morning. Hansen and his father were already astride, cloak hoods low against the wet; the elder Hansen nodded agreeably to them, and his son walked another coin over his knuckles with a faint sneer. The heavy fort gates pulled open, and the rangers rode out into the misted, eerie silent wilds.

 


End file.
